


For Angel

by LuckyPanda13



Category: Borderlands
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Canon Compliant, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-29
Updated: 2015-09-29
Packaged: 2018-04-24 01:10:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4899760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuckyPanda13/pseuds/LuckyPanda13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The day Angel accidentally put her mother into a coma was the day that Jack started losing everything.</p>
<p>The story of Jack's fall into madness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Angel

**Author's Note:**

> So, I LOVE the Borderlands games. Seriously. And my brother and I played through the Pre-Sequel in a matter of days, finding the backstory of Handsome Jack so incredibly enthralling. I know a lot of people have played the games and found that there's NO way Jack actually loved Angel, because of reasons, of which there are very valid ones. But me, everything Jack did, spoke to me in terms of love and the fear of losing what he loved.
> 
> Hence, this.

The day Angel accidentally put her mother into a coma was the day that Jack started losing everything. His daughter, his pride and joy, his most precious, his princess, his little angel… She had, in her childish and youthful innocence, murdered everything that held his sanity in place. One moment, everything was beautiful, with absurdly bright colors and laughter, Angel’s eyes bright blue and her giggles infectious, and the next, Jack’s world was painted grey with fear and anxiety and the knowledge that his Angel would never smile like that again.

Angel was a Siren. From the moment she was born with tattoos covering half her body, her parents knew. Jack knew. He had never considered it a detriment or dangerous until Angel’s mother went into a coma. In that instant, with little Angel sobbing on the floor, her mother unconscious and bleeding next to her, Jack felt fear.

Fear for his daughter. Fear for what his daughter could do. Fear for what she might do. Fear for what people would do to her. Fear that she would accidentally hurt him along the way. The fear was all-pervasive, all-encompassing, and all-destructive. It was the only thing Jack felt for a long time after that.

And he _loathed_ that emotion for the rest of his life.

Every moment he spent finding ways in which to protect Angel from the universe, and vice versa, was filled with fear. He dedicated months of his life to research Sirens and everything about them, hoping he could perhaps cure Angel, save her from what had hurt her mother, from what _would_ hurt her in the end. But, there was no cure. There was no saving Angel from being a Siren.

Just as there was no saving Jack from losing everything.

The first instance of the Control Core showing up in Jack’s designs to restrain Angel’s powers was purely for protective intent. He had lost her mother. He could _not_ lose Angel, too. He couldn’t. He had settled his daughter into the system, explaining over and over again that it was for her own good and that he was just trying to protect her. During the first month, he had gotten more and more shielding of the girl, trying desperately to defend her from herself.

Which was when he discovered the benefits of having a Siren with her abilities hooked up to an A.I. interface. She could alter reality. Literally. If she had access to it through the ECHOnet, she could alter it. His daughter’s love for him and fear of her abilities kept her obedient. Not that Jack needed it. At first, he couldn’t even fathom abusing her powers. She was his _daughter_. She just needed protecting. If she could be helpful while being safe, then all the better. The longer she was obedient, the more dependent he became upon her abilities. His zeal for protecting her shifted from pure protection to helping her reach her full potential. If he could just help her achieve the best for herself, she could change the universe. She could _create peace_! Pure peace. Peace without the violence of bandits. Peace without people backstabbing each other time and time again.

Which was when he discovered Eridium. Well, _he_ didn’t discover it, but he found out that it was a way of augmenting the power of a Siren while stabilizing her abilities. It was the stabilization factor he was going for. If Angel could _control_ her powers, she wouldn’t be a danger anymore. But, the longer Angel was in the Control Core, the more reliant he became on her A.I. capabilities and the less he thought about releasing her when she was stable and safe.

He got his hands on as much Eridium as he could find, giving to Angel. At first, in small doses, but she got more and more addicted to it, demanding more and more with every injection. Soon, Jack was broke with buying Eridium to help Angel. He needed more, in massive quantities.

Angel _needed_ it.

It was a full year after Jack got Angel into the Control Core when her mother woke up. Jack rushed to his wife, leaving Angel performing some basic task while he was gone. He explained to her everything he had done to protect their daughter, to keep her safe. Her reaction was not a positive one like Jack had expected. Instead, they argued, her demanding that he find a way to shut down the Control Core Angel and bring their daughter back to reality. To let the girl live life like a normal person. He was just explaining why that was a _bad_ idea, because Angel was safe and protected and achieving more in the Control Core than she could alone and he was _helping her_ when the building exploded.

Jack survived, but his wife did not.

To no one’s great surprise, the source of the explosion was found to be bandits trying to steal from the “rich docs”. Jack’s obsession with stopping bandits and restoring peace to the violent and dangerous world increased tenfold. He kept researching, hoping to find _something_ that could help his daughter in the endeavor to save the universe. She needed his help. He wouldn’t disappoint his daughter, not when she needed Eridium and he was the only one who could provide it for her.

He found the border planet filled with bandits and danger and violence named Pandora. Pandora was the key to getting Eridium for Angel. But, they had to open the Vault. Jack was adventurous in his words and his bedtime stories to Angel, but he didn’t have the abilities or time to go searching an entire planet for the Vault. Especially when Angel needed him. He couldn’t just abandon her. So, with her assistance, he found four Vault Hunters. Violent individuals filled with greed who wouldn’t flinch at fighting their way through waves of bandits to open the Vault.

He had Angel help them as much as she could so when they opened the Vault and the Guardians and the Destroyer attacked, he knew all about it. They successfully beat back the aliens, even surviving the ordeal, and Jack found himself with a new weapon: the Eye of Helios.

Okay, so he took the eye of the Destroyer and stuck it in the Hyperion laser, increasing the effectiveness and strength of the weapon exponentially. He was promoted for his ingenuity, making his ability to get Eridium for Angel even easier. And with the opening of the Vault, Eridium erupted all over the planet, originating from the entrance of the Vault. Jack, with this newfound surplus of Eridium, began giving Angel as much as she wanted. He sold the rest, quickly becoming rich.

Angel was protected, the Vault had been opened, and soon, Jack could save the universe.

He could be a hero.

For Angel.

He spent a lot of time in fear and desperation, and with the new influx of Eridium, he was able to shirk those feelings off. The world was still grey, but at least he could now see purple. And blue. Angel’s eyes never lost their color to him. He hoped they never would. They were the one thing that he needed to keep going. They were a constant reminder that she needed him. She _needed_ to be protected.

He had Angel help him hire new Vault Hunters, to help him fend off Colonel Zarpedon and the Lost Legion, but had her stay in the background. He didn’t want her interfering with these mercenaries, especially since they were all bloodthirsty and even worse than the first group of Vault Hunters. Speaking of them, Roland and Lilith both actually offered assistance in helping Jack and his new Vault Hunters save Elpis from the Eye of Helios. Even Moxxie stepped up with her uncanny technological knowledge, only paralleled by Angel and Moxxie’s children. Jack was ecstatic. He was powerful and in control of the bad circumstances of his life for the first time since he lost his wife.

When Moxxie, Roland, and Lilith stabbed him in the back, destroying the Eye of Helios at the same time, he was more than a little upset and very much aware that with Angel’s help, he could have prevented them from stabbing him in the back in the first place.

He became increasingly dependent on his daughter, knowing that she could help him from getting hurt. He also became even more paranoid about bandits and Vault Hunters. They wouldn’t stop until they destroyed everything good in the world. Including his Angel and him.

He couldn’t let them hurt Angel.

He killed Tassiter, an imp of a man with no spine and a god-complex, knowing that he needed to be president of Hyperion to save Pandora from itself. He hired new Vault Hunters, through Angel, with the promise of money, Eridium, and guns, and murdered every group that came to his planet. Roland, Lilith, and Moxxie started up a resistance against him, as they _would_ , and he had Angel do everything she could to keep them from interfering. It wasn’t until then that both he and Angel discovered that the constant injection of Eridium into her veins was the only thing keeping her alive.

Panic and fear filled Jack for the first time in years.

_He couldn’t let them hurt Angel._

His paranoia got worse. He went on a rampage, ensuring that every evil thing that came to his planet was eradicated. _Nothing_ could hurt his little girl. He had to maintain the flow of Eridium to his daughter, in the hopes that there would always be enough for Angel to live. There _had_ to be enough. Angel _had_ to live. She was a teenager, barely out of puberty, and she needed to be safe and protected. No one could get to her. So, he murdered every Vault Hunter, every psychopath, every mercenary who arrived on Pandora to keep her safe.

Then, some Vault Hunters survived.

Later, he learned it to be Angel, stabbing him in the back, but he just thought of it as a fluke. He found the new group to be a humorous distraction from the boring lull of killing Vault Hunter after Vault Hunter and slowly hunting down and destroying the resistance against him. And there was another Siren among them. It was convenient to have not one, not two, but _three_ of the universe’s six Sirens all on one planet at the same time. If Angel couldn’t charge the Key, and if Lilith couldn’t charge the Key, then maybe Maya could. Jack had so many back-ups, it was a little unfair to the poor Vault Hunters vying for their lives.

He had missed it.

He had missed how his sweet daughter, the obedient one who loved him and appreciated the sacrifices he had made for her, had decided to betray him. She had been corrupted by the Vault Hunters she protected, letting them turn her into someone who would stab her own father in the back. Jack had put literally every single protective piece of technology between everyone and his little girl. His paranoia for her safety kept him in the same building as well. He never bothered keeping an eye on Angel’s actions, knowing that she’d do what he asked of her.

He should have looked harder.

The one person he never thought would betray him had led the bandits right to his front gate. Before he knew it, they were standing on his doorstep and Angel told them the password, letting them repeat it in Jack’s own voice.

“I love you.”

They were deliberate. They were a reminder to both him and Angel. They were a solemn and sacred vow between Jack and his daughter. That he _did_ love her. That he would _never_ abandon her. That he would _protect_ her. That he would take care of her. Every time he said those three words, he meant them. Every time he said those three words, he remembered every instant of happiness and joy early in Angel’s life. Every time he said those three words, he thought about the infectious giggle that he never got to hear anymore and those blue eyes that were constantly looking at him.

She betrayed that vow.

Jack didn’t know how to react. She had stabbed him in the heart. She had hurt him the way she had hurt her mother. She didn’t love him. She didn’t care about him. She didn’t appreciate anything he had done for her. She… She _didn’t love him!_

“You get the _hell_ away from my daughter!” Jack saw them approach his little girl. He saw them talk to her. He heard her words. He lost his mind. “What the hell are you doing, Angel?!” She thought of herself as a _slave?!_ She saw her life and her obedience to Jack as a lifetime of servitude! Jack panicked, feeling that _fucking fear_ slip up his spine. The fear kept him paralyzed while the Vault Hunters started _killing his daughter!_

“Stopping you, you piece of–” Jack cut her off, automatically, treating her swear as he habitually did.

“Rrgh – language!” The gentle reprimand came out strained through Jack’s fear.

“The Eridium injectors! Destroy them!” Angel _wanted_ to die?!

“Oh, no you don’t! Shields up!”

And the battle for his daughter’s life began. Jack threatened the Vault Hunters, sent in more loaders than he knew what to do with, and _still_ they kept _murdering_ his little girl! Then, right as he thought he was winning, Roland appeared, helping those _goddamn bandits_ kill his Angel! He tried to reason with his Angel. Maybe she just didn’t know. Maybe he hadn’t been clear in his intentions. So, he told her.

“Everything I’ve done was to protect YOU!” He was desperate, with tears streaming down his face in a way that they hadn’t since Angel hurt her mother. Her next words broke whatever remnants remained in his heart.

“Promise me you’ll kill him, friend.”

His Angel wanted him dead. That actually stopped Jack in his tracks for a long moment. Long enough that the Vault Hunters scored another victory against him. His Angel didn’t love him or care for him. His Angel didn’t think of him as a hero. She never had. He got his wits together to shut down the light bridge, preventing Roland from getting to the last injector. And then Lilith showed up. If these bandits wanted to murder his baby girl, he would destroy the whole fucking planet. With Lilith’s help.

But he couldn’t lose Angel. He’d rather _die_ than lose Angel. So, he screamed, begging the Vault Hunters, begging Roland and Lilith, begging _Angel_ … Hoping _someone_ would listen. Hoping _someone_ wouldn’t stoop so low as to kill his little girl.

“Don’t you know what you’re DOING?! Who _cares_ about the _goddamn_ Key – you’re gonna end the life of an _innocent girl!_ ”

“Jack ended my life long ago. This has to end NOW, Vault Hunter.”

Another bolt to the heart.

“I got the shield down! Hit the injector!”

Whatever it was that kept Jack glued to his seat suddenly disappeared.

And he was sprinting for his life, hoping against hope that they didn’t kill his baby girl, her voice in his ears.

“It’s done. It’s finally done. Thank you… friend.”

No.

“Angel, you can STOP this! I’ll still forgive you, baby!”

Anything to keep her from dying.

_Anything_.

“Dad. I have to tell you something…” His heart froze and his whole body stopped, every fiber of his being listening to his daughter and hoping and praying to _everything_ that she wasn’t about to die, that these weren’t her last words. “You’re an asshole.” Then, there was silence. Complete and utter silence. So much silence that it physically _hurt_.

“Angel?”

Nothing.

_No._

There couldn’t just be _nothing!_

No.

“No! _Angel!_ ”

She… was gone?

No.

She _couldn’t_ be gone!

His feet were sprinting before he realized he was moving. He had to get to Angel! Maybe she was still alive! Maybe she was just unconscious! He panicked, terrified, and ready to murder _everything_ in his path between him and Angel. His Angel.

“She’s dead.” Roland’s words froze Jack before he could get into the room.

_She’s dead._

No.

She couldn’t be.

Maybe he was lying?

She had been unhooked from the Eridium for too long.

“Jack just lost his only way to awaken the Warrior.”

No.

Who _cared_ about the Warrior?!

_His little girl was dead._

“We’ve got the Vault Key, but this isn’t over yet.”

Damn right it wasn’t over yet.

Jack was more furious than he had ever been in his entire life.

These _fucking_ Vault Hunters _murdered his baby girl!_

Oh, no.

It most definitely was _not_ over.

“We’ve gotta find Jack and take him out. Lilith, take the Vault Key to Tannis. I’m going after Jack.”

Too late.

Jack shot the man in the back.

He couldn’t feel anything anymore.

And maybe it was better.

Now, he wouldn’t hear Angel’s voice in the back of his head, being his conscience and helping him deal with the tough decisions.

Maybe it was better that way.

“ROLAND!” Lilith screamed in the panicked agony that had abruptly abandoned Jack.

Good.

Maybe now she could feel a _fraction_ of the terror and agony that Jack was being put through.

“Sup.” His voice was broken from all the screaming, all the fear.

“You _bastard_ , I’m gonna–” Lilith sprinted towards him, her Siren powers in full fight mode, fiery angel wings at her back, wounding Jack with the reminder that his Siren, his _Angel_ , was dead. But before she could take two steps towards him, Jack threw the collar on her.

“Language.” The word was mocking, shoving the insult to his Angel back in the other Siren’s face. “What’s that saying? Don’t pick a fight with a man with nothing left to lose?” The words started spilling out as he spoke, losing the control that he had desperately thrown together. “See, I’m going to show you just how much _you_ have to lose – and I got the most powerful Siren on the planet to do it with. Lilith, _kill_ the Vault Hunter. We’ve got a date to keep with the Warrior.”

Oh, yes.

He would summon the Warrior.

He would murder _every living thing on the planet_.

For Angel.

His Angel.

 

 


End file.
